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First Map of an Extrasolar Planet

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the google-not-earth dept.

jiawen writes "Data from the Spitzer Space Telescope has been used by researchers to make the first-ever map of an extrasolar planet. It's a weather map, more precisely, showing temperature variations over the surface of a Hot Jupiter. It really is hot: even the coldest regions are about 1200 degrees F."

9 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Amazing that this is possible at all by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, it's the most interesting area of space exploration now, and imagine where we'll be if the Kepler mission is successful and don't get further pushed ahead in time by budget cuts.

    --
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  2. Re:Amazing that this is possible at all by jdagius · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I don't think it's that amazing. I think all they're doing is logging the brightness of the disk while it rotates around the sun, not actually resolving surface features. So, the 'hot spot' represents the side of the planet of the planet always facing the sun, so as it revolves around the star you see all sides, but the hot side reads out a higher intensity. The poles are pointed away from the earth so the apparent hot spot is seen best at the equator. Think of it as heat glare. We not really seeing any surface features at all, since this phenomenon would occur even if the planet was completely homogenized, heat-proof green cheese. That's my theory anyway, correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

  3. A Matter of Time... by SeaDour · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seems it's only a matter of time now before we can image a planet with pretty city lights on the dark side.

  4. Re:Amazing that this is possible at all by notabaggins · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period.

    More than that, it hasn't been all that long since we were debating how common extra-solar planets might be as we had no data at all. For that matter, it's been all of 77 years since the discovery of Pluto, roughly the range of a human lifespan.

    Maybe it's me but, some days, you just have to sit back and think... wow...

  5. Re:Global Warming by rbanffy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No.

    But Venus is a nice example of a runaway greenhouse effect on a rocky planet. When people predict a stable ice age because of increased polar melting, I am forced to show there are at least two stable states for a planet like ours and I prefer the ice-age one over the other.

    And since we have been in and out ice ages for... ages, the other state seems much more stable.

    --
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  6. Re:I'm confused by cathector · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the article posits that the far side is still pretty hot for the same reason the big Hot Spot is not exactly facing the star: 6000 MPH (9656 KPH) winds are pushing everything around.

    I'm not clear from the articles if by "coolest spot" they mean the coolest spot on the equator, or they're including the poles.

  7. Re:1200 degrees F? by teh+kurisu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I disagree. For weather purposes, having the freezing point of water at 0 is more useful, both because freezing temperatures make a substantial difference to human behaviour, and because it is the same worldwide. I live in what would be described as a temperate area, and temperatures here have never reached 100F and rarely dip as low as 0F, so the Fahrenheit scale is less useful.

  8. Not quite exactly by DrYak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The idea was that 0-degrees was ice-water (e.g. the temperature where water can exist simultaneously as a liquid and a solid. The freezing temperature of water is actually lower than this


    Actually the 0 was fixed as a mix of ice and salt, that also happened to be the lowest temperature observed in winter time in his region (Wikipedia has a couple of such stories).
    0F is much lower than the freezing point of water (around 0C or +32F).

    Celsius fixed his 0 according to physical properties of water - freezing and boiling point.
    Because they where the most easily reproducible in any lab wishing to calibrate it's thermometer during this time (compared to Farenheit which required a MIX with salt for the lower point and unreliable body temperature as upper point).
    Nowadays, the Celsius has been redefined a little bit in order to have a stricter definition (based on absolute zero and water's triple point).

    --
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  9. question about the heat map by narkfly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, after taking a look at the article, the press release, and the associated images, I have a question about the pattern of recorded temperature on the surface of the planet. If the hot spot on the planet is offset by 30 degrees of the substellar (high noon) point because of a predicted 6,000 mph jetstream to the east, why then does the coolest equatorial temperature show up directly to the east of the hot spot? In other words, why doesn't the long orange tail of mid-temperatures extend to the east of the hot spot instead of to the west? Is there a basic principle that I'm missing here, or have i conceived the whole situation incorrectly?